Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Feed in Tarriff

In my opinion the FiT needed cutting and I think 50% was
fair, it is the highest subsidised renewable in the UK, and it is paid for by
you and me in higher utility bills, the people in the PV market say it is too
short notice, they have been given 1 1/2months’
notice, how much time do they want, a year?, why should everyone pay higher
prices for this scheme any longer than needed, it needed reducing and reducing
now, renewables is supposed to be about saving energy, reducing bills and in
doing so reducing the carbon emissions of the property, but with the heavily
subsidised FiT it became an investment, where people were getting a 12% - 15%
return on their investment, this was never the intention of the scheme and led
to large scale solar farms been installed and the rent a roof brigade coming
in, it is these projects that forced the dramatic drop in my opinion.

There are
other renewables on the market, but these were getting overlooked because
people could see that they could make money from the FiT, this has given the PV
industry an unfair advantage over all the other renewables, hopefully we might start
to see more of an uptake of other renewables, although PV still has a much
higher subsidy than any of the other renewables, for example, PV has 21 pence
per kWh, under the RHI thermal solar will get 8.5 pence per kWh.

I keep hearing people saying that 25,000 jobs will be lost
because of this cut, where are these people, where has that figure come from,
there are only 120,000 Registered Gas Engineers in the UK, so for 25,000 people
to lose their jobs in the PV industry, how large is this market supposed to be
in the UK, what percentage of the market does this 25,000 represent, from the
manufacturing side the majority of these panels come from abroad.

It is now time that we have a more level playing field for
renewables, let’s get back to what should be the main focus for renewables,
saving energy, reducing bills and reducing the carbon emissions in properties,
not a way to make money, subsidise should be about encouraging the uptake of
renewables, but the FiT led to abuse of the generous subsidy.